THE patron saint of the parish church of St Dennis was
bornin the city of Athens, in the reign of Tiberius. His name and
fame have full record in the "History of the Saints of the Church of Rome."
How his name was connected with this remote parish is not clearly made out.
We learn, however, that the good man was beheaded at Montmartre, and that he
walked after his execution, with his head under his arm, to the place in
Paris which still bears his name. At the very time when the decapitation
took place in Paris, blood fell on the stones of this churchyard in
Cornwall. Previously to the breaking out of the plague in London, the stains
of the blood of St Dennis were again seen; and during our wars with the
Dutch, the defeat of the English fleet was foretold by the rain of gore in
this remote and sequestered place. Hals, the Cornish historian, with much
gravity, informs us that he had seen some of the stones with blood upon
them. Whenever this phenomenon occurs again we may expect some sad calamity
to be near.

Some years since a Cornish gentleman was cruelly murdered
and his body thrown into a brook. I have been very lately shown stones taken
from this brook with bright red spots of some vegetable growth on them. It
is said that ever since the murder the stones in this brook are spotted with
gore, whereas they never were so previously to this dreadful deed.